Dark Days Challenge: Baking Edition

The only change I made was that I substituted two egg whites whipped to stiff peaks for the one egg. The reason is that I had two egg whites left over from a pasta carbonara dish I made earlier in the week.

And since I was using the mixer anyway, I figured, why not use up the old cream that I have and make butter & buttermilk? This was the first time I’ve used a mixer for this. Usually I (actually, J.) shake the cream by hand to make butter. (It’s been a long time since we made butter this way…definitely not since Max was born).

The surprising thing was that it took about as long to do it in the mixer as it takes J. to shake it and it was much harder to process the separated butter fat and buttermilk in the awkward mixer.

Then we went to the farmer’s market in a nearby town. That’s because we’re going to miss our own farmer’s market tomorrow because we’re going to the volunteer event (more on that later). They had some different vendors which was fun. We picked up a freshly made “take and bake” pizza made with local organic ingredients. The pizza (including the dough) was made yesterday and has never been frozen. We popped it in the oven after the farmer’s market and really enjoyed it. It was a bit pricey, though. $13 for what would be considered a small. Ate it so fast we didn’t take a picture. But the vendor is Uncie Ro and he is featured in this article.

I’m working on dinner as I type. I have made pita dough and am waiting for it to rise. We’ll be having it tonight with ground goat from our farmer’s market meat vendor. (They were out of lamb). We’ll also have cucumber and heirloom peppers with it from the new farmer’s market. The hummus isn’t local, though.

Since this recipe makes 8 pitas — we also picked up some pre-made but uncooked falafels and tahini at the farmer’s market (we don’t have this in ours) to have with the pitas for lunch this week.